


cut to the feeling

by infiniteandsmall



Series: a shore, a tide (no clock, no end, transmit: transcend!) [6]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Gender Exploration, Trans Yuri Plisetsky, friendship and being a bossy older sister, lesbian katsuki mari, mari likes to help people and everyone needs a lot of help, mari loves being a small town trans girl tbh, nb viktor nikiforov, talking about things to figure them out, trans Katsuki Mari
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 08:24:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11158017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteandsmall/pseuds/infiniteandsmall
Summary: It’s a Thursday night, and Mari is sitting around in the gardens with Hana. They are smoking and talking about boybands, and they intend to get up and take it to the noodle shop at some point, but the damp drag of the summer dusk has them both lazing around.“See, look at that,” Mari is saying, showing Hana a picture of her favorite’s most unfortunate hairstyle, when a text notification pops up with a buzz.“‘Your brother’s future husband,’” Hana says, reading off Mari’s phone screen. “Aw. That’s cute.”“He programmed it in himself,” Mari says.-mari has two talks about gender, more little siblings than she would've guessed, and a lot of pictures of boyband members on her phone.





	cut to the feeling

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phylocalist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phylocalist/gifts).



> I was inspired to write the fic by mel phylocalist's trans mari headcanons. I've been wanting to write mel a fic for a while!! it's been amazing to be in CAHOOTS with zir I can't thank zir enough for all the help and encouragement they've given me!! I can only hope to provide that same help and encouragement (and to enable all of those good-ass AUs). You should definitely check out their writing, because it is vibrant and funny and sweet and filled with love and a sense of families knitting themselves together. I hope you like this mel!! <33
> 
> title from cut to the feeling by carly rae jepsen, queen of summer, happiness, and the lgbts!! this fic does not have any malicious transphobia at all. while this fic could stand alone, it will probably be confusing unless you read "who can sing both high & low," the second fic in the series, first.

It’s a Thursday night, and Mari is sitting around in the gardens with Hana. They are smoking and talking about boybands, and they intend to get up and take it to the noodle shop at some point, but the damp drag of the summer dusk has them both lazing around.

“See, look at that,” Mari is saying, showing Hana a picture of her favorite’s most unfortunate hairstyle, when a text notification pops up with a buzz.

“‘Your brother’s future husband,’” Hana says, reading off Mari’s phone screen. “Aw. That’s cute.”

“He programmed it in himself,” Mari says. She and Viktor don’t text a lot, partly because they see each other all the time, and partly because he’s not the best at answering texts. When they do, it is usually to trade song recs, because they both are omnivorous listeners and compulsive music collectors.

She is kind of expecting a link to some dramatic classical music, or a drawn-out synthwave affair, or an old Russian pop song.

Instead: “Huh,” Mari says.

“What?” Hana says.

“‘Help, all caps, could I ask you a couple questions about gender things?’” Mari reads.

“Interesting,” Hana says.

“Gender things,” Mari says. They have discussed their opinions, several times, on Viktor’s cis-ness and possible lack thereof. Hana says he just likes to wear dresses sometimes. Mari, who, Hana should remember, has been privy to Viktor-by-osmosis for basically Yuuri’s entire lifespan, thinks there might be more to it than that. Their speculation had been bloodless and kinseeking in the manner of small-town trans girls everywhere, and so Mari doesn’t feel guilty about it, per say. Maybe a little sheepish, though.

 _yeah sure_ , she texts back. _do you wanna call me about it or text?_  

 _call if that’s alright?_ Viktor replies.

“He’s going to call me,” Mari says.

“Better tell him I’m here and make sure he’s fine with it,” Hana says, which Mari hadn’t thought about.

“That’s a good idea,” Mari says, taps out, _hana’s here, if that's okay_

 _oh yeah that's fine i love hana!!_ Viktor texts back, and then Mari’s phone vibrates as it receives Viktor’s call.

“Hey,” Mari says. “What's up?”

“Hello!” Viktor says. “Sorry if you hear the wind, I’m at the beach.”

“I don’t mind,” Mari says. “Sorry if you hear the crickets, then, I’m in the garden.”

Viktor makes a weird little laughing noise that catches in his throat, then says, “so I need advice.”

“Okay,” Mari says.

“So what if, hypothetically, you made a very bad joke that poked at someone's sore spot,” Viktor starts.

“Did you do this or did Yuuri? Because I'd believe it from both of you,” Mari says.

“It's hypothetical!” Viktor says.

“Go on,” Mari says. Viktor can be very roundabout when something makes him feel vulnerable. People tell Mari she's very blunt, so it all evens out.

“So anyways, gender...issues? Feelings? Were uncovered, and. Could we switch to English?”

“Yeah,” Mari says.

“Thank you,” Viktor says. “I want to be supportive, and I don't want to mess this up, but I don't know what I'm doing, really.”

“This isn't about my brother, is it?” Mari says.

“No, no,” Viktor says. “I guess it would be a lot easier if it was.”

Cryptic. “So like, what's up with the gender feelings?” Mari says. “Do you want advice on how to deal with, like, dysphoria?” Keep it diplomatic, Mari. “And you don't have to answer this, but is this person experiencing these hypothetical gender feelings you? I need a little more to work with here.”

“Ah, no,” Viktor says, sounding a little startled and staticy (interesting). “No, it’s not me, I mean. And I don’t really know what exactly I need advice about, to be honest. I don’t really know where to start.”  
“Well,” Mari says. “At least you asked instead of just going and doing whatever.”

“I’ve learned my lesson about that,” Viktor says.

Hana leans back in the grass and starts lighting another cigarette. Mari shakes her head, mouths, _wait a minute?_ “Listen, I’m starving. Do you wanna meet me and Hana at the noodle shop?”

Hana nods, pokes at her stomach and then presses a hand to her heart.

“Well, Yuuri and Yurio are making dinner right now,” Viktor says. “Could we talk tomorrow morning?”

 _Yurio._ Mari thinks. Of course it’s Yurio. She should’ve figured that out sooner. “Yeah, I have a shift at the front desk at eight, but you’re always up early, so that would work,” Mari says, standing up and brushing damp grass off her butt.

“Okay,” Viktor says. “Do you want to come down to the beach and talk? I usually go on a run in the mornings.”

“I know, everyone always tells me they see ‘my brother’s foreign boyfriend’ out at the crack of dawn, and then that they like how you’re hardworking.”

“Wow!” Viktor says.

“I’m not running though,” Mari says.

“Okay,” Viktor says, and he sounds like he’s still grinning. “Enjoy your noodles!”

“We will,” Mari says.

They’re all quiet for a second, Mari and Hana and Viktor on the other end of the phone, the wind from over the sea and the breeze in the garden. Mari’s never been good at ending phone calls unless she’s sitting behind the front desk.

“Thank you,” Viktor says. “Thank you a lot.”

“No problem,” Mari says, and ends the call.

She slides her phone back into her pocket, then, and reaches out a hand for Hana, who’s still lying in the grass.

“Sounds like he needs to sleep on it,” Hana says, as Mari (very considerately, she thinks) performs the grass-brushing ritual on her.

Hana squeaks and half-heartedly and performatively swats at Mari’s hands.

“Professional athletes,” Mari says. “That’s how they are, always rush rush rush.” Even her little brother, who walks syrupy slow and turns thoughts over in his mind for days, gets that way sometimes. If there's one thing Hatsetsu has taught her, it's that a little time can do big things.

“Let’s go get those noodles,” Hana says, stretching her arms over her hand.

“Sure,” Mari says.

 

The next morning is clear. Mari walks to the beach with one earbud in, watches all the shuttered storefronts stirring and sees the dots of light along the coast, sparser than they had been when she had walked the beach in the mornings with her mom when she was a kid.

She sees Viktor when she’s still far away: a tall shape sitting on the breakwall, looking out over the water and occasionally fiddling with his phone like he’s changing the music he’s listening to.

“Hey,” she calls before she reaches him, because she walks very quietly especially when her feet are bare and people say it’s startling.

“Oh. Hi!” Viktor says, head snapping up from his phone. His grin flashes genuine. “Do you want to sit?”

“No, that’s cool,” Mari says. “I’ll be sitting behind the front desk all morning. We can walk.” They do. The sand’s still cold underfoot, the sun still wan on the water. “So Yurio, huh,” Mari says.

“I didn’t say that,” Viktor says. He’s quieter in the mornings, Mari thinks.

“Yeah, but it’s Yurio,” Mari says. She kind of wants to smoke, but the wind is blowing so stiffly that she’s not sure if her cigarette would light. She figures it’ll wait until the walk home, when she gets into the town and the buildings and the air gets quiet.

“I didn’t mean to...invade his privacy,” Viktor says.

“It’s what families do, sometimes,” Mari says.

Viktor’s still quiet, and Mari thinks, _a. child celebrity, b. inviting his skating coach and his ballet teacher to his wedding and not his parents._

“It’s like when you came here,” Mari says. “And you asked me, and Yuuko and Takeshi, and Minako, and Mom and Dad, about what was up with Yuuri, so you could be a better coach.”

Viktor stifles a laugh at that. “I remember I kept googling, then, trying to figure out what to say to someone with anxiety, but I had to find out for myself that there’s nothing you can say that’s just going to make it go away.”  
Yuuri’s anxiety has always been such an ingrained part of him, and Yuuri such an ingrained part of Mari, that Mari can’t remember ever feeling that impulse, but she gets it.

“It’s like that now,” Viktor says. “I tried reading about it, but I’ve read a lot of gender theory, but that’s one thing, and _Yurio…_ ” Viktor spreads his hands, which say it all, and all of which Mari agrees with.

Mari waves a hand in the air. “I’m a country girl, that stuff’s way over my head. Why didn’t you ask Yuuko about this, though? He likes her a lot.”

Viktor shrugs. “He actually likes you a lot, too. I know he makes it hard to tell sometimes, though.”

“Ah, he’s more transparent than he thinks,” Mari says. _All of you are. Figure skaters,_ she thinks, but she hadn’t thought that Yurio might feel any way in particular about her. If anything, she had supposed he might dislike her: she has poked at him about being cute in the past, which he seems genuinely prickle at. “I don’t mind, though.”

They walk with just the sound of waves on the shore for a bit. Viktor slips in the silence the way that people who are used to being alone in a place do.

“So,” Mari says. “What was it like for you when you cut your hair?”

Viktor looks at her sideways from the corners of his eyes like the question was a non-sequitur. Maybe it was, a little, but Mari wasn’t sure where else to start, since it was clear Viktor wasn’t comfortable with telling people things Yurio had confided in him, which was as it should be, but made the whole thing sort of difficult and twisty.

“See, I let mine grow out for a little when I was, like, twelve, ” Mari says, running her hand over the short hair on the back of her neck. “I’d just started blockers and had all these conversations with my parents about how I was...scared, really, to grow up like the boys I saw, how I felt like I couldn’t stand it. It was weird, because I couldn’t really see myself in all the aunties around Hatsetsu, either, you know? So I felt weird saying I was a girl, but that was what I wanted to say I was, too. So I felt like I should be super feminine, at first, and I tried wearing lots of pink and things.”

Viktor’s grinning down at the sand. He’s seen the pictures of Mari as a kid, with her boy’s clothes and a smile that was half a scowl (or maybe the other way around), Mari as a teenager after hormones with her boy’s clothes and that same grimace-grin.

“Hey! We all had phases,” Mari says, knocks herself against Viktor. “Do I need to remind you that you skated in a bondage costume when you were sixteen and then talked my brother into wearing it? Ew, I didn’t need to know these things!”

“He talking himself into wearing it!” Viktor laughs, stumbles sideways across the sand.

“Again: I didn’t need to know,” Mari says. “Anyways. You saw how long my femme phase lasted.”

“I haven't seen any photographic evidence of it, if that's what you mean,” Viktor says.

“No one does,” Mari says darkly. Except for Hana, thanks to her mom and dad. The fact that Yuuri’s most embarrassing phase just involved a really weird cowlick that had made his hair stick straight up in the back when he was young and round-faced enough that it was still adorable is unfair.

“What made you realize that you actually didn’t like...presenting like that?” Viktor says.

Mari shrugs. “I guess I started seeing girls who weren’t feminine, both like, pictures online and people I knew. I starting taking notice because I thought they were cute, and then I realized that I really wanted to look like them, too.” She remembers her crush on Nao, who was a few years older than her and worked with her dad at the docks, repairing boat engines. She was strong and quiet and had grease underneath her fingernails and Mari had always hung back around her when their dads were gossiping, nervous for reasons she couldn’t define. “So,” she says. “When did you decide to cut your hair? Weren’t you a teenager?”

“Ah, not quite,” Viktor says. “I was twenty-two, I think?” He puts a finger vertical across his mouth, considering. “Yeah, twenty-two.”

“Did you feel better after you did it?” Mari says. The sky is light enough now that the outlines of the gulls are clearly visible. She grabs Viktor’s elbow and steers him around so that they’re walking back towards where Mari left her shoes.

“It took some getting used to,” Viktor says. “It was kind of an impulsive thing, so I didn’t have much time to think about it before. I mean, having long hair felt good sometimes, and bad sometimes, and having short hair felt good sometimes, and bad sometimes.” Viktor scuffs his toes in the sand beside her. “That’s life, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Mari says. “I’m not sure if it’s like that for me, really.”  
“Huh,” Viktor says. “Well, what can you do, you know?”

“Yeah,” Mari says. “I don’t know what you could do about it. Finding a word for it might help. That’s how it was for Yuuri, with his anxiety. Or maybe not. Everyone’s different, you know?”

Viktor nods. “It seems like it might be simpler now, to start thinking about it again,” he says. “For so long, while I was competing, it was all mixed up.” He hesitates, looks out over the water, still all pre-dawn dark and featureless.

“You’re going to try to not be pretentious,” Mari says. “It’s okay, I’m used to it. Hana’s got a Literature degree.”

“I know!” Viktor says. “We’ve talked about Bulgakov!”

“Glad she has someone to talk about all those Russian books with,” Mari says.

Viktor looks very pleased at that.

“Anyway, go on, continue with your pretension,” Mari says, teasing, and Viktor looks even more pleased for a second, a flash of a grin across his face before he presses his fingers to his mouth, thinking.

“It’s like. There was skating, and there was art, and I used myself to make the art, and so I couldn’t divorce my perception of my appearance and my presentation from the art that I wanted to make. And I didn’t want to be a novelty, the femme one, the pretty one, you know? I wanted to prove that I was versatile.”

“Figure skaters,” Mari says. “Buy the baggage of an athlete and get the baggage of an artist free.”

“Wow,” Viktor says wryly.

“Do you think Yurio might be going through something like that, though?” Mari says.

Viktor nods. “Now that I think about it, I really wouldn’t be surprised.”

Just _talking_ about things works so much out sometimes. When will they learn. “When you all come over for dinner tomorrow night, send Yurio early. Tell him you and Yuuri have to do something and that you’ve rented him out to us to help cook dinner.”  
“Rented him out,” Viktor says.

“I don’t know, hired him. Whatever. I won’t annoy him about it, or push, but then if he wants to talk to me, he’ll have an opportunity,” Mari says.

“Ah,” Viktor says, eyes getting wide as he nods. “You’re brilliant.”  
“I’m the best older sister ever for a reason,” she says. The sun had come up at some point, without them noticing, illuminating the fine mist hanging over the water. “I have to head back now, but don’t forget.”

“Forget? Me?” Viktor says, putting a hand to his throat. “Never. I’ll send him over.”

“Good,” Mari says. “You heading home?”

Viktor shrugs. “I’m going to run around for a little first.”

“Running,” Mari says, with distaste

“I like it, to be honest," Viktor says. "It helps me think."

“Everyone’s got their thing,” Mari says. “See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Viktor says, pulling out his phone and picking at the tangles in his earbuds. He looks down at his phone when he says, “thank you,” this time. “For your trouble,” he adds.

“Nothing’s trouble for our Yurio,” she says.

“That’s true,” Viktor says.

Mari pulls her own phone out of her pocket with one hand as she slides her sandals on, pulls out her pack of cigarettes with the other before she sets off for home. It’s a cool morning, but it’s going to be a hot day. She still thinks of Yurio as determinedly fifteen: remembering that he’s older now, calmer and more assured, is a surprise. Now that she knows Viktor, it’s easier to see how Yurio ticks. As much as it would piss Yurio off, they’re not that different: they want attention and they want to be known.

The knowing is harder to get than the attention: for all Yurio’s front is transparent, it must look solid from the inside. She thinks of these things, and watches Hatsetsu wake up around her, watches the dawn-muted streetlights go off as she walks under them. She hopes that she can help, because Yurio’s a good kid. Mari likes to take care of people, or maybe it’s more true to say she just likes people, because as much as she comes off as standoffish, people are _interesting_. It’s why she feels content, walking back to sit behind the desk and answer phone calls for the rest of the morning. She can’t wait to text Hana the details when the desk is quiet, before the guests wake up and begin stopping by for breakfast and morning soaks and directions.

 

Yurio shows up the next afternoon disgruntled and sweaty, dragging Viktor’s pink bicycle along beside him up the back walkway. Mari’s on her smoke break, leaning up against the wall, in the shade from the waist up but the sun warm through the cotton of her pants all along her thighs.

“The stupid fucking thing got a flat tire,” Yurio says in greeting.

“I can go get the air pump,” Mari says. Yurio lounges, catlike, in the sun, while Mari refills the tire.

“So you guys need help cooking or something?” Yurio says.

“Mom’s doing pretty well with the cooking, I think,” Mari says. “Wanna help me fold towels?”

“Sure,” Yurio says.

He follows Mari inside, where it’s dim and cool. He sets to work without complaining, and folds the towels crisp and precise. His jawline’s gotten stronger, or maybe that just because there’s no hair to hide it.

“Hey,” Mari says. “Does it actually bother you when we call you Yurio? I know you have that Russian nickname thing, right? We could call you that.”

Yurio smooths his hands over the towel, eyes wide, before he snaps the ends of the towel viciously and says, “it’s a stupid nickname,” he says. “But now you’re all used to it and you probably would forget and call me it _anyway_.” He folds the towel very roughly and tosses it on top of the pile of previously-folded towels, where it sits, slightly mangled, before he takes it and refolds it again, tidier this time. Mari takes all of this as his way of saying that he likes it, in his own way, likes the way his belonged is marked with a name of his own.

“Okay,” Mari says. She hadn’t bothered to think of any questions more probing than that: she’d thought they wouldn’t help Yurio as much as they would needle him. They fold towels in silence for a few more minutes, working their way quickly through the stack. “How about that wedding, though?” Mari says eventually.

Yurio makes grumbling sounds low in his throat.

“I still have to buy a suit,” Mari says. “And I’m sure Viktor will have something to say about whatever tie I pick out.” Thrift runs in the Katsuki family, and the only ties she owns are polyester rainbow or polyester lavender. All of Yuuri’s wedding party are wearing something blue, and Mari has already raided her father’s closet for a blue silk tie and turned up with nothing.

“He’s so stupid,” Yurio says. “He wants us all to wear this stupid burgundy color, and he keeps saying it's burgundy but really it's just pink.”

“Do you not like pink?” Mari says.

Yurio shrugs. “I'm not one of those stupid guys like JJ who get all weird about what they wear,” he says. “I just look dumb in it, like if I'm wearing a lot of it.” A lot of it, Mari thinks. It sound like he’s talking about more than a tie. Mari can recall picking around the idea of wearing dresses when she was young and then menswear when she was a teenager the same way she suspects Yurio is now.

“Ask him if you could wear something gold,” Mari suggests, because Viktor is always down to add more gold into anything. “Or if you were going to wear a dress or something, maybe put a blazer over it?”

Yurio wrinkles his nose like he thinks the idea is dumb, but he pats at the stack of folded towels sitting next to him thoughtfully. “You’re wearing a suit?” he says.

“Yeah,” Mari says.

He pats the towels again. “Cool,” he says.

“Here, come with me to put these away,” Mari says, getting to her feet.

“Okay,” Yurio says.

The halls are cool and dim and quiet with the late afternoon, most of the guests napping or at the beach or in the gardens or the baths.

“I’m an older sister,” she says, as they pad, barefoot, through the corridors. “I kind of treat everyone like they’re my little brother, sometimes.”

“I’m not,” Yurio says.

“I know,” Mari says. “I just wanted to tell you that you’ve grown up a lot. You’re not a kid anymore, and I know it.”

“Good,” Yurio says, quick, and then, “You boss Viktor around, don’t you?”

“I boss both of them around,” Mari says.

“Good,” Yurio says, even quicker, and Mari has to laugh.

“Thanks for the help,” she says. “I’m turning you over to my mom now.”

“Your mom is cool,” Yurio says.

“She says you have to makings of an excellent cook,” Mari says.

Yurio gets wide-eyed at that, and follows her silently the rest of the way to the kitchen.

 

The next time Mari sees Yurio, her hair’s the same length it was when she was fifteen. Yurio had called Mari once, shaky-voiced, in the middle of the afternoon, which meant it was the middle of the night in Russia.

“What’s up?” Mari had said.

“Your dumbass brother didn’t pick up his phone,” Yurio had said, sounding all sniffly and young.

“You’re safe?” Mari had said.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Yurio had said, rough, but Mari was familiar with the sound of those sharp quick breaths.

“Well, I’ll stay on the phone as long as you want me to,” Mari had said. She’d waited, listening to the far-off sounds over the phone: Yurio, or static, or the speakers brushing against fabric. “Remember to breath deeply,” she’d added, and she’d heard Yurio suck in a lungful of air.

She hears Yurio even out, the other end of the line getting quieter.

Finally, Yurio talks: “Sorry. I don’t know why I was freaking out.”

Mari just hums, noncommittally. “It’s fine, Yurio.”

“I mean, I guess. I was going to ask everyone tomorrow morning if he could…” Yurio trails off into an unintelligible mumble.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch that. Bad reception,” Mari says.

“It was nothing,” Yurio says.

“You sure?” Mari says.

“Yeah,” Yurio says. More quiet. Mari’s been walking circles around the gardens. She lays her hand against a smooth green branches, pulls and pushes it up and down and watches the leaves dance. “I was just going to ask everyone if they could. Like. Use different pronouns for me. Tomorrow,” Yurio says, mumbly.

“Ah,” Mari says. “Just for tomorrow, or from now until you say differently?”

“The second one,” Yurio says.

“Do you want to practice on me?” Mari says.

“I’ve already _practiced_ ,” Yurio says, the _duh!_ unspoken.

“Okay,” Mari says. “Are you worried that someone won’t do it?”

“I mean. No?” Yurio says. “It’s just like. What if I ask everyone, and they do it for me, and then I decide that nevermind, I don’t actually want them to call me she anymore? Then I’ll feel like a stupid asshole.”  
“Well,” Mari says. “When I asked if you wanted to people to just use different pronouns for you tomorrow, just for that one day. That’s something people do, and that’s perfectly fair to ask of people.”  
“I get that,” Yurio says. “But if I act like I have it all figured out and then I’m like. Nevermind! I look dumb. Like I don’t know what I want.”  
Mari finds herself shaking a finger in the air, even though Yurio is in Russia and not sitting next to her in the gardens. “Listen here! That’s foolish. Don’t be cocky. You’re never going to have everything all figured out. Do you know what you want to do when you retire from skating?”  
“No-o-o,” Yurio says, dragging the word out until it sounds creaky, almost sheepish.

“Exactly. Does that mean you don’t want to skate now? Of course not.”

“Okay. Damn!” Yurio says.

“Go to sleep, Plisetsky,” Mari says.

“I will, I will,” Yurio says, sulky.

And now Yurio’s back, leopard print suitcases in tow, jetlagged and wearing one of those shirts with a cat with middle fingers raised poking out of the pocket.

“You got taller,” Mari says.

“Yeah, it sucks,” Yurio says, making a face.

They look at each other, for a second, both standoffish, Yuuri and Viktor and Hana laughing off to the side. Even Otabek might be smiling a little behind his sunglasses and the straight line of his mouth.

“Come give me a hug,” Mari says, and they wrap their arms around each other’s shoulders and squish their sides together, and now Otabek is definitely smiling, and Yuuri and Viktor and Hana are cackling.

“Oh my god! You guys are so embarrassing!” Yurio says.

“Yeah, I’m with her,” Mari says, jerking her thumb Yurio’s way while Hana reaches her hands out for Mari’s waist.

“ _Thank_ you!” Yurio says, and slides her own pair of sunglasses on, spreads her hands out dramatically. “Let’s get this party started?”

 

Mari is in the midst of a knot of very drunk lesbians plus Yuuko and Takeshi crowding up against the DJ booth.

Viktor’s rinkmate, Mila, the redhead who’s been teasing him and fussing over him like a sister all night, is demanding that Otabek play “All the Things She Said,” while Sara Crispino, who is apparently Mila’s biggest competition and also her girlfriend, is trying to write _All The Things She Said by t.a.t.u._ on a piece of paper. Hana is yelling over the music into Sara’s ear, trying to convince her to write her favorite girl group’s latest single down as well. Phichit’s cousin Nam, who has already invited all of them to Thailand for a visit and is about 160 centimeters of pure energy, has an arm around Takeshi’s shoulder and another around Yuuko’s neck. Yuuko is not, Mari supposes, technically a lesbian, but she’s bi, a recent discovery for her and one that Mari had privately called a while ago, and she is red-faced and bright and sparkling with the triplets with a babysitter for the night.

Otabek Altin looks visibly flustered, which takes a lot. Yurio is sitting curled up close to one of the speakers, probably blowing out an eardrum.

“Play Migos, Otabek,” she calls over the noise.

“I will,” Otabek says, a smile poking into one corner of his mouth.

Mari extricates herself from the fray and leans over to Yurio.

“Hey,” she shouts. “You wanna dance?”

Yurio regards her outstretched hand much more unguardedly than she would’ve when Mari had first met her.

“Sure,” Yurio says.

They elbow their way onto the dance floor.

“I haven’t told you this yet,” Mari says. “But you look good. Really stylish!”

“Of course I do,” Yurio says, but she grins. Her dress is a solid-sequined golden glitterbomb, her boots are stompy, the sharp-cut blazer in the requested burgundy she’s been wearing earlier had been left draped over the back of a chair somewhere, Mari assumes.  

Mari sees Yurio, and her brother and his husband and all their weird figure skater friends beaming at each other and dancing athletically, and she feels all warm and fuzzy inside, or maybe it’s just the open bar.

“Hey, Yurio!” Viktor calls, sliding towards Yurio’s elbow with a shit-eating grin, Yuuri trailing behind with his fingers in the collar of Viktor’s shirt. “Looks like you finally found a Katsuki you can beat in a dance off!”

“Speak for yourself,” Mari says.

Yurio snarls Viktor’s way. “I could beat you, too, asshole.”

“Is that a challenge?” Viktor says, quirking an eyebrow. Yuuri’s eyes get a competitive glow, one that Mari knows all too well.

“Hell yes, it is,” Yurio says.

“It’s on,” Yuuri says, his grip on Viktor tightening.

“I’m out,” Mari says. She slips through the ring of people who have begun gathering around Viktor and Yurio and her brother, Phichit Chulanont patting his pockets down from his phone frantically for his phone, Viktor’s friend and Minako’s man Chris unbuttoning his shirt; Minako’s going to pass out, Mari thinks gleefully.

She makes her way to Hana’s side. A pair of black spandex shorts have been produced for Yurio to wear under her dress. Otabek is grinning into the back of his hand. The speakers are truly bumping.

“This is wild,” Hana says.

“True,” Mari says. It’s certainly very loud.

“It’s pretty nice, though,” she says.

“Also true,” Mari says. “Wanna go closer so we can see?”

“ _Oh_ yes,” Hana says. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

They take each other’s hands at the same time, lean in lips-first towards each other at the same time. Hana laughs into the kiss, and Mari swings her out onto the dance floor. Mari’s people are happy, and so is she: it’s all bright lights. It’s all golden.

 

 


End file.
